Topic: Yoga, types of

Traditional yoga practitioner
Yoga literally means to link with the Supreme. Yoga is often thought of as a form of physical exercise, but its bodily sitting postures, asanas, are just the first part of an ancient system of meditation.
The yoga system was originally meant for realizing God, and all varieties of yoga practice are supposed to bring one to that point. Success in yoga ultimately...

From leads obtained during my visit to the Thoreau Lyceum in Concord, Massachusetts, I have now gathered a few more articles and books that link Thoreau’s life and philosophy with the Vedic tradition. My readings have confirmed the feelings I had while at Walden Pond that Thoreau was striving in his own way to practice yoga. Without a bona fide spiritual master, however, he was unable to...

One wet evening in 1972, when I was first learning about Krisna consciousness, I sat in a tent leafing through Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is. Occasionally I looked out gloomily through the rain to see the dim outline of the Pyrenees Mountains surrounding the little green valley in which I was marooned. The rain had fallen steadily for two days without sign of letting up. Even my...

Lord Krishna discusses the major forms of yoga, setting up a hierarchy and saying clearly which one belongs at the top.
When Time magazine ran a cover story on the science of yoga, it reported that "fifteen million Americans include some form of yoga in their fitness regimen—twice as many as did five years ago." Yet one wonders if any of the fifteen million are getting out of yoga what they...

Ages ago, Saubhari Muni was so accomplished at yoga that he could meditate underwater. Everything was going fine, until …
To practice yoga, or silent meditation, you first of all need a secluded place. Traditionally, yogis have retired to Himalayan caves, to remote corners of dense, unexplored jungles, even to the depths of an ocean or river. The great yogi Saubhari Muni meditated for many years...

A dozen or so students gathered in the assembly room of the college dormitory for an introductory talk on bhakti- yoga. I got their attention and said we’d now do some yoga. About half of them pulled their legs up into some semblance of the lotus position, waiting for tips on breathing and concentration.
But instead of the sound of silence, they heard the sizzle of a small pair of hand cymbals....

[Yoga literally means to unite, to link with, to connect with God. The physical exercises we commonly associate with yoga help align our body, mind and spirit to achieve a peaceful state of samadhi, complete absorption in our spiritual reality. In this article, Jayadvaita Swami briefly explains three main paths of yoga given by Krishna in Bhagavad-gita.]
According to the Vedic literature, there...